North Korea is moving fast to consolidate its new leader Kim Jong-un, with senior military officials already having pledged allegiance, the South's intelligence service believes.

It also disputed the official account of Kim Jong-il's death, telling MPs in Seoul he could not have died en route to a visit because his train had been stationary all weekend. Officials suggested the account could have been created to burnish his image as a Dear Leader devoted to his people.

A source with close ties to Pyongyang and Beijing told Reuters that the military had vowed to support the "great successor" and an unnamed South Korean source told Yonhap news agency that Kim Jong-un had issued his first military order – for all units to return to their bases – just before the announcement of his father's death. The 28-year-old became vice-chairman of the Central Military Commission of the ruling Workers' party and a four-star general last year.

Kim has taken the lead in mourning his father's death. Official media said more than five million North Koreans had gathered at monuments and memorials in Pyongyang since the announcement of Kim's death, aged 69, on Monday.

Dr Leonid Petrov, an expert on North Korea at the University of Sydney, said it would be crucial to see what new roles Kim Jong-un assumes and how other key positions are filled "in the coming days, months and even years".

A key question will be whether Kim replaces his father as chairman of the National Defence Commission (NDC).

"If it is Jang Song-thaek [the young general's uncle and vice-chairman of the NDC] it means Kim Jong-un will be more of a ceremonial figure. If he [Kim] goes straight to the chairman's seat — which would be logical — he will be very firmly put in the driving seat," he noted.

Petrov added that Kim Jong-il appeared to have prepared the ground for his son by purging officials over the past two years.

But analysts stress that Kim Jong-un will wield less power than his father, and that even Kim Jong-il ruled with the support of the military rather than with the supreme authority of the country's founder Kim Il-sung.

In Seoul, Won Sei-hoon, director of the National Intelligence Service (NIS), threw the account of Kim Jong-il's death into question by saying there was no sign that Kim's special train ever left Pyongyang station over the weekend. He cited US satellite surveillance photos.

"We kept tabs on Kim's whereabouts until Thursday but could not locate him starting Friday," added Won, according to the Chosun Ilbo newspaper.

"There are signs that he tried to go somewhere [on Saturday morning] but died."

An unnamed intelligence official added: "We believe he died at home."

"Death on the train is possibly the best story that the North Korean regime can use to promote Kim as a hardworking leader who worked for the people until the moment he died. North Koreans would feel there's a huge difference between an easy and peaceful death in his bed and death at work far from home," a senior South Korean official told the Chosun Ilbo.

State media tributes have lauded Kim's devotion to duty and humility – even stressing that the photographs now hanging around the capital show him "in an ordinary jumper".

Military officials told the Chosun Ilbo that they believed Kim's train had travelled over the weekend, although a report from Yonhap news agency later challenged that account.

A researcher at a state-run thinktank argued: "It's a great risk to the credibility of the regime if it's later revealed that Kim died in his bed. They would think twice about lying about it."

In South Korea, a small group of activists and defectors gathered to launch giant balloons carrying 200,000 leaflets attacking Kim and the hereditary power transfer across the border.

North Korea has previously warned it would fire at its southern neighbour because of such pamphlets.

Some carried slogans such as "Kim Jong-il is in hell". One showed Kim Jong-il flanked by portraits of Muammar Gaddafi and Egypt's ousted president, Hosni Mubarak.

In Beijing, Chinese premier Wen Jiabao and other top leaders followed president Hu Jintao by paying respects at North Korea's embassy.

All nine members of the Politburo standing committee – the top political body – have now visited, underlining China's determination to retain its influence and support a smooth transition in its neighbour.

South Korean intelligence disputes circumstances of Kim Jong-il's death | World news | guardian.co.uk

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As North Korea prepares for the funeral of Kim Jong-il, speculation over the guest list has reached Shakespearean levels of intrigue. The few non-Koreans attending the funeral could include a Japanese celebrity magician. Tenko Hikita performed in Pyongyang at Kim Jong-il's invitation in 1998 and 2000, and is said to have had several private dinners with him. The magician, known in Japan as Princess Tenko, has received phone calls and emails from one of Kim's relatives inviting her to the funeral, reports said, adding that she had yet to decide whether to accept. One notable absence from the guest list is Kim Jong-nam, the deceased leader's eldest son who, according to Confucian tradition, could at one time have expected to take over from his father. But the 40-year-old ruled himself out of succession plans when he was caught attempting to enter Japan on a fake passport in 2001, saying he wanted to visit Tokyo Disneyland. His detention, and immediate deportation, proved a huge embarrassment for the North Korean authorities. Jong-nam failed where the leader-in-waiting, his youngest brother Kim Jong-un, had apparently succeeded. Jong-un made a visit to Tokyo Disneyland in 1991, when he was aged about eight, the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper said. Accompanied by his elder brother, Jong-chul, he entered Japan on a fake Brazilian passport and stayed for 11 days. He had left by the time Japanese security agents began tracking his whereabouts, the newspaper said. Jong-nam now lives in de facto exile in Macao, where he is said to be a regular visitor to the Chinese territory's casinos. He has not been seen in public since his father died, and his name is not on the list of 232 prominent North Koreans organising the state funeral. Experts said Jong-nam would do well to stay away from the funeral in case his presence was interpreted as an attempt to undermine his youngest brother. "If I were Kim Jong-nam, I wouldn't come to the father's funeral; to Kim Jong-un, he is more a political enemy than a half-brother," Choi Jin-wook at the Korea Institute for National Unification in Seoul told the New York Times. Even if the middle brother, Kim Jong-chul, attends the funeral, he is not expected to appear in TV coverage. "This is a precarious time for his siblings," Choi said. "They must lie low. At a critical time like this, there are people too eager to prove their loyalty to the new 'king' by removing anyone seen as threatening." According to the state media, the government has not invited any foreign dignitaries, but has encouraged South Koreans to pay their respects at the ceremony in Pyongyang next Wednesday. The government in Seoul does not plan to send a delegation and has imposed a travel ban on ordinary citizens, but has authorised a select group of people to attend. Among them is Lee Hee-ho, the wife of the former South Korean president Kim Dae-jung whose "sunshine policy" of engagement in the late 1990s has given way to frostier ties under the current president, Lee Myung-bak. The South says it will allow her to attend, given that the North sent representatives to her husband's funeral in 2009. Accompanying her from Seoul will be Hyun Jeong-eun, chairwoman of the Hyundai group, a major investor in the North. Some expect her to use the opportunity to discuss North Korea's seizure of Hyundai assets at Mount Kumgang, a North-South operated resort, earlier this year. North Korea's government website, Uriminzokkiri, warned of "grave consequences" if the South turns down requests from citizens who wish to attend the funeral. "We are watching the attitude of the South Korean government," it said. In Pyongyang, where mourning will continue until December 29, thousands of people continued to view Kim's body or bow before portraits erected throughout the city. Mourning stations are reported to have opened in locations across the country. "Our sorrow at the loss of our leader is tremendous," Sok Kil-nam, a steel±worker in the city of Nampho, told Associated Press. "As long as we have our great comrade Kim Jong-un, the cause of the respected Kim Jong-il will go on, so we will continue working." Tokyo Disneyland is not Kim Jong-un's only connection with Japan. His mother, Ko Young-hee, was born into an ethnic Korean family in the western port city of Osaka in 1953. Ko, a professional dancer who became one of Kim Jong-il's consorts in the 1970s, went to live in North Korea in the 1960s under a repatriation programme organised by the country's ruling Workers' party. She died, reportedly from breast cancer, in 2004. Japan is home to 600,000 ethnic Koreans – mostly the descendants of people forced to work in Japan during the war – about 150,000 of whom have ties to the North. Japanese media reported on Friday that the government had warned several leading members of the general association of Korean residents in Japan – North Korea's de facto embassy – that they would not be permitted to re-enter after attending Kim's funeral. The travel ban is part of a series of sanctions imposed after the North conducted missile and nuclear weapons tests in 2006. The last Japanese prime minister to promote engagement with the North, Junichiro Koizumi, visited the association's Tokyo headquarters on Thursday to pay his respects to Kim Jong-il. Koizumi secured the release of five Japanese citizens abducted by North Korean agents during the cold war, following talks with Kim in Pyongyang in 2002. Japan, the US and members of the European Union on Thursday boycotted a moment's silence for Kim held at the UN general assembly in New York.

North Korea's guest list for Kim Jong-il funeral raises speculation | World news | The Guardian

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Hahahahaha, Heath's Great Bores of Today do North Korea:

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The State’s founder, Kim Il Sung, claimed that all he wanted for North Korea was to be socialist, and to be left alone. In that regard, the national philosophy of self-reliance known in North Korea as “Juche” is little different from India’s Gandhian version known as “swadeshi”. Just let us get on with it, they said, and without interference, please. India’s attempt to go it alone failed. So, it seems, has Burma’s. Perhaps inevitably, North Korea’s attempt appears to be tottering. But seeing how South Korea has turned out — its Koreanness utterly submerged in neon, hip-hop and every imaginable American influence, a romantic can allow himself a small measure of melancholy: North Korea, for all its faults, is undeniably still Korea, a place uniquely representative of an ancient and rather remarkable Asian culture. And that, in a world otherwise rendered so bland, is perhaps no bad thing.

Mick Hartley: True to its cultural roots

"I was saying to Tristan the other day I mean when you think about it whatever the media say about North Korea it's so much more authentic and spiritually connected to itself than so many other countries that have been corrupted by Western consumerism I think the North Koreans have retained a sense of community and nature, don't you? Imogen went to South Korea once and they have McDonalds there which really makes you think about the impact Western culture has on these traditional societies she'd been going to bring back kimonos to decorate the chill-out zone at the agency with but she couldn't find find any which I think says it all..."

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